White Privilege

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The Long, Necessary History Of 'Whiny' Black Protesters At College : Code Switch. Students at the University of Missouri protested this fall amid concerns about the administration's handling of racial issues.

The Problematic Vilification of Student Activists at Yale. The first time I saw a friend wearing blackface I was a freshman in college.

What’s Really Going On at Yale — Personal Growth. Why ‘Cops’ lives Matter’ fundamentally misses the point. This image taken from video surveillance provided by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office shows a suspect in the death of Deputy Darren Goforth, who was shot several times while filling up his patrol car at a suburban Houston gas station Friday, Aug. 28, 2015.

(Harris County Sheriff’s Office via AP) In Harris County, Tex., Sheriff Ron Hickman is in the midst of a difficult time. He's lost one of his deputies to a shooting at a suburban Houston gas station. And while the man arrested in connection with the shooting death of Deputy Darren H. Goforth has yet to provide law enforcement with a motive for his alleged actions, Hickman has provided one for him.
Investigation: Police shootings - Washington Post. It Was No Compliment to Call Bill Clinton 'The First Black President'
In 1998, Toni Morrison wrote a comment for The New Yorker arguing that “white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President.

The next time someone says 'all lives matter,' show them these 5 paragraphs. This week, high-profile police killings of two black men—Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile, who was killed in Falcon Heights, Minnesota—have renewed heated debates about police violence, and brought the Black Lives Matter movement back into the spotlight.

Every time this happens, cries of “Black Lives Matter” tend to be met with the response “All Lives Matter.” Even presidential candidates have made this mistake—last year, Hillary Clinton said “All Lives Matter,” though she has since corrected herself. And lots of white people have expressed confusion about why it’s controversial to broaden the #BlackLivesMatter movement to include people of all races. The real issue is that, while strictly true, “All Lives Matter” is a tone-deaf slogan that distracts from the real problems black people in America face.
“People know next to nothing about Reconstruction”: The pernicious Civil War revisionism poisoning American history students. The new issue of Jacobin, commemorating the 150th anniversary of Union victory and emancipation, is out now.

Subscribe today to get a copy or order a single issue. No living historian has done more to shape our understanding of the American Civil War era than Eric Foner. A rare scholar who is both prominent outside the historical community and esteemed within it, over the course of a fifty-year career Foner has acquired virtually every award, tribute, and professional honor available to a historian in the United States. Yet the true measure of his legacy lies not in accolades but influence.
The Hard Truths of Ta-Nehisi Coates. After the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. and the hopes of Barack Obama.

The Confederate Cause in the Words of Its Leaders. This afternoon, in announcing her support for removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asserted that killer Dylann Roof had “a sick and twisted view of the flag” which did not reflect “the people in our state who respect and in many ways revere it.”

If the governor meant that very few of the flag’s supporters believe in mass murder, she is surely right. But on the question of whose view of the Confederate Flag is more twisted, she is almost certainly wrong.
Database Error. Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Race by Jen Graves. One day in front of a class of art history students at Cornish College of the Arts, I say, "Raise your hand if you're a racist.

" I hadn't planned on this. That class period I was focusing on James Baldwin and Glenn Ligon, both gay men, both African American, and it hit me that because there wasn't a black person in the room, things were getting abstract. This art is valuable and has to be taught—there really is no arguing against Baldwin, and Ligon's painting Black Like Me #2 was one of the first President Obama brought to the White House—but how do you teach someone to have a relationship to it?

How people convince themselves that the Confederate flag represents freedom, not slavery. Undue force - Sun Investigates - The Baltimore Sun. The Sun’s findings include only lawsuits that have been settled or decided in court; dozens of similar cases are still pending.

The city has faced 317 lawsuits over police conduct since 2011 — and recently budgeted an additional $4.2 million for legal fees, judgments and lawsuits, a $2.5 million increase from fiscal 2014. “This is not something I take lightly,” Rawlings-Blake said. “I’ve worked hard, very hard, to have a dialogue with the community about how do we build trust and send the message that law enforcement that acts outside of the law will not be tolerated.” Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts, who took over in late 2012, has publicly vowed to eliminate misconduct among the city’s 2,800 officers.

Lloyd Fox Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez leads the bureau tasked with keeping police officers accountable.
#Transracialization: It really is a thing. Dear Rachel Dolezal, As I have listened to your interviews on television, I have tried to set aside my personal feelings and judgments in order to better understand your story and your struggle. I am a biracial African American who was transracially adopted as a child, and I have two white non-adopted siblings.
Alex Landau and Patsy Hathaway. Alex Landau (AL): I was about 4 years old and a little girl on the playground came up to me and said, "Not all white kids like to play with black kids.

" You grabbed her and told her, "You don't talk to my son like that, you need to leave.
" Patsy Hathaway (PH): Yeah, the one that hurt me the most, you were 8 years old and outside on a really very hot day, covered from head-to-toe with a long-sleeved shirt. And I didn't understand why you were dressed like that and you said, "Because you didn't want your skin to get any darker.

" AL: We never talked about race growing up, I just don't think that was ever a conversation. PH: I thought that love would conquer all and skin color really didn't matter. AL: Yeah.
Ta-Nehisi Coates on White Supremacy and a Life of Struggle. The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates and The Root’s managing editor, Lyne Pitts Tony Anderson for The Root This year we selected writer Ta-Nehisi Coates as the top honoree on The Root 100, our annual list of influential and high-achieving African Americans.

It was June when The Atlantic published his widely read and highly acclaimed cover article, “The Case for Reparations,” which “lays bare a compelling argument for the pecuniary redress of Africans brought to this country in chains and continually terrorized—socially, politically and economically.” Coates sat down with The Root’s managing editor, Lyne Pitts, to talk about the impact of his record-shattering article, which, he says, “way outdistanced my expectations.”
Walter Scott, Thomas Slager, and the Myth of Police Reform — The Atlantic. The real problem is the belief that all our social problems can be solved with force.

There is a tendency, when examining police shootings, to focus on tactics at the expense of strategy. One interrogates the actions of the officer in the moment trying to discern their mind-state. We ask ourselves, "Were they justified in shooting?
" But, in this time of heightened concern around the policing, a more essential question might be, "Were we justified in sending them?
" At some point, Americans decided that the best answer to every social ill lay in the power of the criminal-justice system. When Walter Scott fled from the North Charleston police, he was not merely fleeing Thomas Slager, he was attempting to flee incarceration. Last week I was in Madison, Wisconsin, where I was informed of the killing of Tony Robinson by a police officer.
Lynching as Racial Terrorism. Photo It is important to remember that the hangings, burnings and dismemberments of black American men, women and children that were relatively common in this country between the Civil War and World War II were often public events.

When America behaved like ISIS: Jesse Washington and the Bible Belt’s dark history of public lynchings. How Our Brains Perceive Race. This post first appeared at Mother Jones. Hiphop dance troupe at Pacific Northwest Black Community Festival, Seattle, 2010.
Is This Working?
The Economic Impact of School Suspensions. 12 things white people can do now because Ferguson - Quartz. As we all know by now, Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenage boy, was gunned down by the police while walking to his grandmother’s house in the middle of the afternoon.